


one's end (RC's post-campaign D&D oneshots)

by RaisingCaiin



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Genre: Gen, M/M, Oneshot collection, Snapshots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-29
Updated: 2019-05-29
Packaged: 2020-03-29 10:25:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,820
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19018012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaisingCaiin/pseuds/RaisingCaiin
Summary: *another* series of oneshots written for D&D campaign and original characters!(first chapter is table of contents and content warnings)





	1. table of contents

**Author's Note:**

> Series of oneshots written following a homebrew D&D campaign created and run by Erlkoenig! More credits for their characters in table of contents (chapter 1)
> 
> EDIT: ALSO, this is work #60 here on Ao3?!?! Aaaaah, but also completely apt
> 
> EDIT #2: no longer updating, so have marked as complete

1\. table of contents: you are here!

2.  _"are you able to find your ground"_  (M): kaeh's PoV of final boss battle and immediate aftermath (tw: suicidal ideation) 

3. _"what does that look likel, moving on"_  (T): kaeh and brelyeis have different ideas of why kaeh is still here 

4.  _"you may say i'm a dreamer"_ (T): kaeh cuts his hair

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

** Characters:  **

Adaire, Bontemp, Brelyeis, Lhalo Mourninglight, and Riel all appear courtesy of @erlkoenig; Moth, Raf, and Nikusha were created by @thulimo; Mort stems from the brain of @kris-why; River is @luescense's. 

. . . which means Kaeh is all mine, and I have no excuses for him. 


	2. are you able to find your ground (M)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written May 10, 2019
> 
> (tw: suicidal ideation)

_ Are you able find your ground / Other people / Falling down / Tell the world then / Sign your head for hell / I can be your someone / You believe in _

 

  * __To Believe, The Cinematic Orchestra__



 

  
  


This time, it doesn’t take three days. And this time, it isn’t something that a god shows him later, weeks after it happened, in bits and pieces measured out in just as much detail as he thinks Kaeh can handle, one hand steady on his shoulder as Kaeh struggles to absorb the worst sounds, the worst images, the worst story, of his life.  

(Which, he couldn’t – still can’t – but that is neither here nor there.)

Because this time, it is only a matter of seconds. And this time, Kaeh is  _ right there. _

One moment, Nikusha is running her mouth like usual, trying to goad the two versions of Brelyeis into slipping up, revealing which one is  _ him  _ and which is an imposter, and Kaeh and Mort are cautiously moving to try and flank the two combatants without getting thrown off the roof by the pitch of the storm.

(And isn’t that a kick in the gut, that Kaeh himself couldn’t tell, not definitively. The two visions of Brelyeis had looked at him with equal familiarity, had both claimed to know the size of his cock with the same dismissive boredom, had both spoken with an arrogance that Kaeh has never seen blossom quite so fully before. And Kaeh knows he is damned because for the life of him, he just couldn’t tell which one of them is the Brelyeis he knows, and what kind of lover, what kind of soldier, what kind of  _ man _ , does that make Kaeh?)

(He couldn’t tell which one is his lord.)

Then the next moment, one of the two visions of Brelyeis has thrown off her disguise to reveal a wood elf woman whom Kaeh had spoken with, drank with, laughed with, that day in Stravenka what feels like ages ago, and the other –

The other Brelyeis, the real one, has been pushed right over the edge of the capitol roof.

It is only a matter of seconds, and Brelyeis is gone.

Dead.

Alone.

_ Again _ .

 

. . .

Kaeh doesn’t know quite what happens next.

Maybe he screams, and the sound is torn away by the storm raging around them. Or maybe he doesn’t, his jaw falling open in preparation but his voice completely annihilated in the face of this much grief and horror.

But in the end, this is not what matters. What matters is whether or not he had known which one was truly Brelyeis.

(Kaeh hadn’t.)

What matters is whether or not he had been able to get close enough that Brelyeis could have grabbed his hand, either to pull himself to safety or else to take Kaeh down with him.

(Kaeh wasn’t.)

And so it doesn’t matter at all whether or not Kaeh screams. (He doesn’t.) The darkness over the side of the capitol roof has devoured Brelyeis whole and he is dead. Again. And Kaeh is -

Here.

Alone.

Again.

Even if he  _ could _ scream, the storm would probably tear the sound from his throat and fling it over the edge of the roof, much like Brelyeis –

No.  _ No. _

Somehow Kaeh makes it to the edge of the roof, slip-skid-sliding over wet tiles as the elven woman throws back her head and chortles her triumph into lightning-split skies. Somewhere behind Kaeh, Nikusha hollers; somewhere behind him, Mort yells, something about someone – probably Kaeh – being a dumb idiot bastard who is going to get them all killed. . . no, that’s definitely Kaeh he’s yelling about. But Kaeh can’t – he just, he  _ can’t _ . He has to make it to the edge, has to look down, has to see for himself –

But there is nothing, no one, for Kaeh to see as he leans over. It’s storming hard enough that the heights from the capitol’s roof gape open into a featureless void, and Brelyeis –

Brelyeis’s body is nowhere to be seen.

So.

Once, the best man Kaeh has ever known was broken by constant torture over three hellish days, and he only spoke in the end, when for some reason he thought it worth his while to absolve Kaeh of his abandonment. And now, that man has been broken again, this time by a fall from the roof of his own fucking keep, abandoned again even though Kaeh –

Kaeh was right there.

So.

Kaeh straightens, standing from a crouch that he doesn’t remember taking. A dull chill spreads outward from the center of his chest, and a dull roar builds in his ears. His knuckle-cracking grip on the old man’s bow loosens, and Kaeh wonders, absently, if he can spare the breath to tell Mort or Nikusha that they should take it back to Riel.

After all, Kaeh isn’t going to need this particular weapon anymore. And he’s not going to be seeing the old man again.

Because Brelyeis will not be alone this time. Not – not again.

He – he can’t be. That isn’t  _ fair. _

Kaeh takes a step toward the edge.

And Mort must see it – either that step, or maybe something else of Kaeh’s resolve, the sudden set of his back or the slack of his grip. But either way, the halfling yells louder –  _ you’re really going to just leave us here? we’re going to die, you bastard! _ – and the words cut through the chill, the roar, the fog, slicing like hot knives through Kaeh’s skull. Because Mort is right – Kaeh owes him too. And Brelyeis has already gone over, he’s already – he’s already gone.

If Kaeh waits a few moments longer, maybe he can pay back what he owes both Mort and Brelyeis.

First, Mort lives. And then, whatever happens next, Brelyeis doesn’t die alone.

~ ~ ~

They survive the fight with Sable – because that’s her name, they eventually remember, this woman Kaeh had once drank with and laughed with, this woman who had led both the Order and the Oracles and so destroyed so much of what was good in the world.

They survive because the old man’s bow shoots true and Nikusha knows near as much magic as Moth does and Mort is a stronger, better man than Kaeh will ever be. And when it’s all over there’s a knock at the little hatch they’d climbed through and Mort is grabbing Kaeh’s arm with a gruff  _ No, you’re coming down this way, you bastard, with  _ **_us_ ** _ ,  _ and Kaeh lets himself be pulled further and further away from the edge because it doesn’t matter anymore, now: he’ll get back to it when Mort isn’t around to be upset by it.

(It’s  _ alright _ , the memory murmurs in Kaeh’s ears, and for the first time in a long time he almost believes in this benediction he was given, long after Brelyeis had already died. It  _ is  _ alright, because Kaeh’s now so close to making things that way.)

And then they’re through the hatch again, and Nikola is there to meet them, thrusting two new heads at Mort –  _ to add to your collection,  _ he says with glee – and distantly, Kaeh notes that that’s two more aristocrats dead now. He should probably be thrilled but he’s just so numb, and if he’s not going down the same way Brelyeis did then Kaeh has a lot of stairs to climb, he needs to get started as soon as possible. . .

When Nikusha starts talking to Laurel, comparing notes on the battles they’ve all just survived, Kaeh gives up pretending and just starts walking. “If – if you haveta talk, can you at least do it on the way down.”

It’s not a question, because he’s going down to look for Brelyeis’s body whether she likes it or not. But Laurel seems to hear it as one, because he looks over at Kaeh and tells him, impossibly gentle: “He’s on his way, you know.”

This doesn’t make the slightest bit of sense to Kaeh, but Laurel is biting his lip and looking at Kaeh so sadly, like he can see some of Kaeh’s resolve on his face and he thinks that what he’s just said should help. And – it doesn’t help, it doesn’t help at all, but Laurel is one of Brelyeis’s too, he’s someone Brelyeis had also picked and guided and trusted, so it seems like it’s on Kaeh to be civil and at least nod back at the fey advisor when really all he wants to do is be on his way down the stairs of the capitol, where maybe he can even let loose the scream he can finally feel building in the back of his throat. . .

He makes it as far as the door. Which opens to reveal –

Brelyeis, his jaw and the side of his face crumbling as he’s propped up by two guards. And as Kaeh stands dumbfounded, unsure what the hell he’s seeing, Laurel races forward to take Brelyeis’s weight and support him toward one of the big comfortable chairs that decorate his chambers.

Everything –

Everything gets a little fuzzy for Kaeh, then.

  
There’s a rush to bring Brelyeis some of the potions that Nikusha found in his desk earlier, though Nikola picks through the three that he’s brought and hands one off to Laurel before dropping the other two unceremoniously to the tiled floor, watching with a certain amount of glee as the glass vials shatter and the liquids are lost in glistening rivulets. Laurel administers the other to Brelyeis gently, and the slow dry rot of that beloved face seem to slow, then stop, then reverse, and –

Kaeh has no idea what is going on. Nikola pulls off his skin to reveal that he’s Maon and Nikusha starts asking about being twins and Laurel gently tells Mort that Adaire is just downstairs and –

And somehow, amidst all this, it is the easiest thing in the world, the very easiest thing in the world, for Kaeh to take those last three steps separating him from the chair where they’ve put Brelyeis and to tumble to his knees before it.

Before Brelyeis.

Nothing else much seems to happen. Nikola and Nikusha and Mort continue to talk in the background; other people seem to come and go, talking of what Kaeh doesn’t know. Laurel holds the pieces of Brelyeis’s healing body – a thumb and a hand, a cheek and a cheekbone – together with an ease and familiarity that Brelyeis doesn’t seem to resent and Kaeh can only watch, wide-eyed. And somehow, being on his knees beside Brelyeis in his chair becomes being on his knees  _ before  _ Brelyeis in his chair, and as it does, Brelyeis finally looks down, his eyes tracking slightly as he registers who it is at his feet. One of his fine eyebrows rises, a gesture so familiar that it hurts, and Kaeh can feel the tears coming to his own eyes.

Laurel, still perched on one of the arms of the chair, coughs and stands, murmuring something that is probably lovely and diplomatic and that Kaeh couldn’t give a single less shit about. Brelyeis nods as his diplomatic protégé speaks and leaves, but his sightless gaze never leaves Kaeh, and Kaeh only screws his eyes shut because the tears are coming quite quickly now.

“Are you alright?” Brelyeis murmurs, sounding half annoyed and half genuinely concerned, and wholly, entirely himself, and no.

No, Kaeh is not alright, and he will never be entirely alright again, and he is not sure how Brelyeis is taking the events of tonight with such equanimity, but. This time, this one time, Kaeh thinks that it might be understandable to lie because this is just a little one, and it’s – it’s so close to being true anyway.

“I’ll be alright,” he whispers, and perhaps it doesn’t sound convincing because Brelyeis tsks and reaches down to swipe a slender figure beneath one of Kaeh’s wet eyes. And because it  _ is _ Brelyeis, Kaeh doesn’t even think about fighting that touch, even when it comes so close to such a sensitive organ and could do so much damage to him if it slipped.

It doesn’t matter. It’s –

 

It's alright. 

“I’ll be alright, if you’re here,” he manages to say, finishing the lie in a way that makes it the complete and utter truth, and Brelyeis gives a tiny, disbelieving scoff. And something about that sound, or maybe about what Kaeh himself has just promised this man – that  _ it’s alright, it’s alright, it’s alright _ – throws the floodgates well and truly open. Still on his knees, Kaeh leans forward and presses his face against Brelyeis’s belly as the tears finally come. 

 


	3. what does that look like, moving on (T)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written May 11, 2019

He lingers even when Brelyeis’s patience finally wears thin and he orders everyone else out of his chambers. And it doesn’t take Brelyeis long to notice that Kaeh has stayed - or to assume why he’s done it. 

“I’m not having sex with you right now,” he says frankly, not even bothering to look at Kaeh as he gets to his feet - carefully, shakily, but entirely of his own power.

Kaeh longs to just nod, to avoid entrusting anything else important to words given how quickly and completely he tends to fuck those over, but - Brelyeis is tired. He shouldn’t have to be dealing with any ambiguity, any interpretive issues. Not right now.

So Kaeh answers. With words.“Of course not.”

Brelyeis is standing now, making his way toward his bathing chambers, but he kind of - glances over his shoulder at this. “That’s it, that’s all you're going to say? Just acceptance?”

He asks like this is a challenge, like he expects some hidden takeback now, and that baffles Kaeh completely because - no? No, there’s no second meaning and no takebacks - there never are, not with Kaeh. Brelyeis was clear what he wanted and Kaeh would never, ever presume that his touch is welcome after -

After everything that has happened. So.

“Yes,” he tells Brelyeis quietly. “That’s all.”

Brelyeis’s eyes narrow when Kaeh remains where he is: seated, now, on the floor at the foot of the same chair where he’d knelt earlier. “Stay there, then,” he says shortly, and Kaeh can almost imagine an apology of sorts in the words, though he hasn’t the slightest idea what Brelyeis could be apologizing for. “I am not at my best this evening, and I want to believe you but I am not sure that I can.”

Kaeh catches himself simply nodding again before he remembers - words. Brelyeis is tired and hurting and blind and he needs the explicit confirmation of words. So.

“I’ll be right here,” he promises.

There’s another pause, longer this time, before Brelyeis says, briskly, “Good.” Then he disappears into the washroom and Kaeh remains where he is, laying his head down on his crossed arms and watching the door Brelyeis has disappeared through.

Until Brelyeis comes back out, now a little cleaner and dressed in soft sleeping robes. Then Kaeh turns away. 

Can’t - can’t be looking until Brelyeis indicates whether that’s all right.

From across the room, Brelyeis tsks.“You’ve seen me naked before, Kaehlan, and you seemed quite happy about it then,” he says briskly. “No need to assume some sort of false modesty now.”

Permission thus granted, Kaeh turns back to look at him - only to gasp, faster than he can stifle it.

Swathed in his robes and perched atop his bed, Brelyeis is enthroned in dark majesty. And, more importantly, he’s  _ alive.  _ He’s  _ alright. _ Kaeh can feel the tears prick at the back of his eyes again, and he scrubs his hand against them, roughly. And Brel just watches, curious and slightly baffled, head cocked to one side and listening as Kaeh asks quietly: “Can I sleep at the door?” 

“Whatever for?”

_ Because then anything or anyone that comes for you tonight has to come through me first. Because I want to be near you in any way you’ll allow. Because I can’t sleep by a window tonight, I can’t quite look out at the roofs again yet. _

“To keep watch. I’ll leave my weapons here, by you, if you want.” 

“In case I don’t trust you, you mean.” Brelyeis snorts. “How could I have forgotten how ridiculous you are, Kaehlan?”

But it’s not a  _ no, take them with you _ , so Kaeh doesn’t. As he stands, he unbuckles the belt and sheath, pulls his bow and quiver from his side, then bends and places the steel short sword and the great black bow in a neat stack at the foot of Brelyeis’s chair. Then he makes his way toward the door, where he collapses in a graceless heap at its foot instead. 

Though he hadn't - though he hasn’t been thrown from a roof tonight - he has been fighting for his life, and then kneeling for several hours, and now that the rush of adrenaline is over his body is suddenly feeling the strain. Much like Brelyeis seemed to be, earlier.

Brelyeis. Who is still watching him like he half expects Kaeh to get up and demand a place beside him, in the bath or on the bed. As if he truly believes Kaeh were in any place to be demanding.

“Sleep,” Kaeh whispers.

“And you’ll what, protect me?” Brelyeis snorts. “I can protect myself well enough, thank you.”

No. No, Kaeh can’t protect him - last night was proof enough of that and more. But -

“I can buy you time.” That’s what Kaeh is good enough for, barely, and he knows it. “To sleep. To protect yourself.” And if it isn’t enough for Brelyeis, then he’ll leave his things where they are and sleep in the hall. 

“Ridiculous,” Brelyeis says, and there,  _ there,  _ some of an old old fondness might be resurfacing. “Sleep yourself, you absurd creature. Anything that could have tried to kill me already has, and failed at that.”

This is not a reassurance for Kaeh because it means there are things out there stupid enough to  _ want to try _ . But at Brelyeis’s assurance he hums his assent - that’s close enough to words that it counts, right - and stretches his aching body out in front of the door. 

Sleep never quite comes. Kaeh’s attempted rest is full of nightmares, and he can’t let himself go entirely because then how will Brelyeis sleep, without a watch to warn him? So Kaeh stirs at the slightest sound, whether it’s that of Brelyeis turning beneath his sheets or the storm blowing itself out against his windows or  _ oh fucking hells  _ someone at the door. . . 

He’s already alert and listening when the door begins to open, catching him in the gut. He’s on his feet in an instant, hands flying up to grasp the intruder’s throat and force them away - away from Brelyeis, away from his rest, away away away. . . 

He feels the knifepoint tickling his gut in the same breath as he recognizes Bontemp. The valet looks nonplussed for having been grabbed and all but thrown out of the room, and he regards Kaeh steadily.

“So. You’re back. Well.” Bontemp takes a deep breath, and his knife is as steady as his voice. “I’m sorry you’re upset that he did not allow you to sleep with him, but you need to let me go in and see to him.”

The apology is clearly a lie meant to temper Kaeh’s perceived ire, and Bontemp is fighting to keep his calm at having to tell it. Kaeh himself nearly shakes with how wrong the valet is, how badly he’s misunderstood Kaeh’s fright, when actually - 

“Lotta folks been dressing up as you lately,” Kaeh says, calmly as he can. “So. Tell me something only his real valet would know.”

There’s a small spark of understanding on Bontemp’s face, though the knife remains where it is. “He loves peonies.”

The memory smashes over Kaeh’s head - bright beautiful flowers that he has no name for, in a great glass vase in Brelyeis’s study - a gift from Folke, a mockery that Kaeh had raged and smashed and then regretted, kneeling to prick his hands bloody collecting shards of glass lest Brelyeis step on them. 

No, no, peonies aren’t enough to prove this is Bontemp because others on the council had known.

(For that matter, Kaeh - Kaeh doesn’t know where Folke is, right now. Where Brelyeis’s fiancé is. Why he hasn’t come racing back to comfort the man he’s set to marry, when he heard the news. What could Folke possibly think is more important right now?!?!)

So right now, all Kaeh can do is push a little harder, snarl a little louder. “Not good enough. Others knew. Something else.”

Bontemp only blinks, but Kaeh can tell that he’s being weighed. Maybe Bontemp knows who smashed the vase, then.

Then Bontemp speaks again. “I taught you how to draw the baths he likes. Warm and full of lilacs, lavender. You wouldn’t let me leave and go about the rest of my duties until you were sure you’d done it right.”

Kaeh’s hands fall away from his neck immediately. He barely manages a nod, a whispered  _ I’m sorry, I had to be sure,  _ and Bontemp simply nods back as he steps past Kaeh and into Brelyeis’s room.

Kaeh doesn’t follow, this time. His legs suddenly feel too weak to carry him, and he collapses in a heap at Brelyeis’s door - Bontemp can be trusted. And he doesn’t move again until a shadow falls across his body and Brelyeis is standing above him, dressed for the day. 

As if he has a council to corral. A city to run. A people to lead.

When all that Kaeh has seen is left are ruins and vines and bones.

“Why are you still here?” Brelyeis asks, impatient all over again. “I have work to do.”

And Kaeh rues his stupidity the night of the masquerade all over again. For the way it made Brelyeis doubt him. For the way it made Brelyeis think that Kaeh saw him as a stepping stone to something else - his power? his influence? his wealth? - when really it was only ever Brelyeis himself that Kaeh had come here for.

He struggles for the words. “I am here because - because you are.”

Brelyeis huffs. There’s no fondness in the sound, only the exasperation and exhaustion of a man who nearly died the day before but still needs to face the world with mask firmly in place lest it try and kill him again. 

His strength, and the ongoing need for it, breaks Kaeh’s heart.

“I’m going to need you to speak plainly, I’m afraid,” Brelyeis says briskly. “What. Do. You.  _ Want. _ ”

“You.” It comes out hoarser than Kaeh would like and Brelyeis jumps on it immediately - “Beneath you with my legs spread, yes, I know” - but Kaeh barrels on:

“Safe. And happy. And comfortable.”

Brelyeis is watching him openly now. “I don’t have the time right now to be guessing what that means,” he says, and maybe he means to sound impatient but now all Kaeh can hear is his exhaustion. “What are you trying to tell me, Kaehlan?”

Words are just words - empty air, useless without actions. He wishes he knew how to make them alone enough.

“That I am yours. In whatever way you would have me or command me. I don’t know what that means yet because I don’t know what you want, but - whatever it is, my answer is yes.”

Perhaps sensing this very conversation,  Bontemp has stepped back from his place behind Brelyeis, giving the two of them room to speak. But silence stretches for a moment anyway as Kaeh has run out of good words and Brelyeis just regards him, thinking.

“Right now what I need is a guard,” Brelyeis muses, finally. “I cannot think of anything more until Santhoven and her people are secure. Can you do this?”

Can Kaeh remain silent? Can he stay a step behind Brelyeis and watch his back, the walls, the halls, as he walks? Can Kaeh wait?

These are not even questions.

Yes. Yes. And yes. He meant it, when he said whatever Brelyeis wants, whatever Brelyeis needs. 

“Yes.”

“Then stand up,” Brelyeis tells him, not unkindly. “Bontemp will find you something in my colors.”

He extends a hand, and maybe it is meant for Kaeh to take and stand, or maybe it is meant for him to accept and kiss. 

He does not know which.

So he struggles to his knees and does both -  kisses the tops of the fingers being offered, and then takes the hand to rise to his feet. Brelyeis gives a tiny gasp at the first, and watches him intently at the second before pulling his hand back and making a shooing motion back toward his rooms where Bontemp has disappeared. 

“Go. Get yourself cleaned up and put on what he finds. Don’t come back until you’re at least a little more presentable, yes?”

Kaeh simply nods with a sound of mute affirmation as he turns to go find Bontemp and don Brelyeis’s colors.

  
  
  
  
  
  



	4. you may say i'm a dreamer (T)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> orig written May 29, 2019

Two days later, the quiet moment that Kaeh has been watching for finally comes.

There’s some grand meeting that even guards are not permitted to attend, and the chancellor –  _ Brelyeis –  _ the chancellor ( _ Brelyeis)  _ tells him brusquely that no, that means Kaeh too,  _ don’t you even think of getting all bull-headed on me now _ . But Kaeh doesn’t grow obstinate about following him in – not here, not now. There’s a quiet surge of panic at the thought of leaving Brelyeis alone, but by now Kaeh knows exactly what this really is – his own failures speaking. That panic comes from his own horror at hearing Brelyeis die in the last time, his own terror at thinking he’d seen him die again in this one, and so it’s not an instinct that will serve Brelyeis in any way if Kaeh pushes through it and demands to follow him when Brelyeis has already made it clear that Kaeh cannot.

So Kaeh murmurs a quiet  _ yes  _ – he has worked so hard to on speaking and letting Brelyeis hear it, instead of depending on his body for a gesture like a nod and assuming that Brelyeis will see it – and steps back, doesn’t push. One of Brelyeis’s brows arches at the compliance, but the expression quickly smooths away and he is gone, in a swirl of black and silver striding away to join his new council, and the door is shut nearly in Kaeh’s face.

And then he is alone in the hall.

Finally.

He has time. He has knives. All he needs now is an empty room. He won’t even need a mirror, not for this. 

Besides. What could a mirror tell him that Kaeh isn’t already intimately aware of? He knows what he would see.

Average height for his kind. A constellation of scars – rope, and blade, and arrowhead, and magic – that speak of his trade in ways that no healer or potion will ever erase. Nose broken so many times that he can’t even remember its original shape. The grey eyes, earthen skin, and green mottling that mark him a wood elf – or, from fireside tales he can only half-remember, one of the children of storm.

And that hair, his distinctive hair. Tight curls cropped mercilessly short above his ears, tight curls twisted into proud ropes that now hang halfway down his neck even when pulled back from his face. A badge of pride and one of only two connections that Kaeh still has to the place and people he came from once, oh so fucking long ago.  

It isn’t so hard to find an empty room, what with the new council being in session on the same floor and all the high folk who once flitted about here gone.

_ (And maybe some people would find it horrifying, that Brelyeis took the lives of an entire quarter in his hands and crushed them like so many insects. Maybe some people would argue that this was immoral, unethical, unjust. _

_ Not Kaeh. He’s seen what high folk do to the other lives on the lands they claim their own. _

_ Brelyeis was right. Kaeh will die on this hill if the need arises.) _

It isn’t so hard to slip inside, to unknot his hair, to draw a knife.

He only hesitates when he realizes that this could make a mess of Brelyeis’s colors. He only stops to pull off the black and silver uniform shirt before he takes up the knife again, setting it right to the roots of the tightly-twisted strands. With Brelyeis’s colors safely out of the way, there is no more hesitation.

Kaeh slices. Hair parts. A rope falls.  

Another follows. Then another.

Another. Another. Another.

Vaguely, briefly, he wonders if there was meant to be more to this act. Were there ceremonies, words, he would have said if he knew more about the people he had come from?

No matter. This isn’t for them, or even for him.

It is for Brelyeis. It was always going to be. The thought had entered Kaeh’s mind the second they found those vials of blood, those locks of hair – traces of a magical lie, traces of a crime that Kaeh hadn’t even known was possible but had immediately abhorred with every fiber of his being.

_ You don’t steal another’s self. You just – you don’t. _

So. This is fitting, Kaeh thinks, as another rope falls. Because, the way Kaeh sees it, his role as a guard is not actually to protect Brelyeis – the man is far more powerful than Kaeh himself, and to assume that he needs protection from an illiterate wood elf is all kinds of insulting.

No, Kaeh is simply here to keep watch. To back. To support.

And that extends to Brelyeis’s person.

Kaeh knows he was proud of his hair, and now that has been taken against Brelyeis’s will. Brelyeis will live with the reminder of that theft for as long as it takes his hair to grow out again, and Kaeh – Kaeh simply refuses to let him live through that reminder alone.

Brelyeis has been alone through enough. So. Whether it is through hardship, or indignity, or even death, Kaeh will not let him stand alone again.

The ropes fall slower than Kaeh had thought they would. But then again, it has been years since he’d last done this, last taken it all off. Almost seven years, when he’d cut everything loose and buried it with River, beside the remains of the home they’d once shared. 

Kaeh had tried to explain the significance of this kind of choice, once. Probably done it poorly, too, given his usual record with words.  _ Used to cut it all off, when I finished a campaign _ , he’d said, lying stretched and sated alongside Brelyeis in Orwick, Moth lounging across from him. Moth had mourned this loss he’d never even seen and Brelyeis had hummed, curious but too worn out to even ask, and here and now, Kaeh can feel his own ever-present anger rising. Things had been good, in Orwick. Brelyeis had been safe, and happy, and comfortable - in fact, they all had. And maybe Kaeh himself isn’t responsible for all of what happened afterward, but he’s responsible for enough of it that the rage overwhelms him for a heartbeat or two.

The knife slips while his attention wanders. He’s still not used to having one fewer finger; he never realized how many things he needed all ten for until suddenly he had only nine to work with. There’s the wet warmth of blood on his scalp, some of it from his hand and some from his head, and Kaeh curses quietly as he disentangles the knife just long enough to suck the cut on his hand dry. Then it’s back to work, struggling to tamp down an anger that will never get him anywhere because the time it came from is dead and gone. So Kaeh tries to breathe in time with his cutting and eventually the new rhythm is enough to calm his racing thoughts.

He finds himself humming snatches of an old marching song beneath his breath. He’s about to stop himself – he may not know the old ways for cutting hair but he’s pretty damn sure that including songs from their dispossesors is fucked up on a number of levels – but then he recognizes the tune he’s fallen into. It’s not actually just any old marching song. It’s one the soldiers themselves had created, one that Kaeh himself had sung to Brelyeis, low and quiet, that night outside Caer Bogh after their first encounter with Mourninglight.

After Raf’s death. Before Moth came. The first time Kaeh had ever seen a crack in the veneer he’d cast over this man, seeing him as a monster the same as any other lord Kaeh has ever known.

So the fact that he’d fallen into it again now seems -

Fitting.  _ Fair _ . So Kaeh keeps humming as he cuts, and the last braid falls just as he reaches the last line, the one that wonders what a world without war would even look like.

He couldn’t imagine such a world then, the first night he held Brelyeis, and he still can’t imagine it now. But, as Kaeh drops the knife and runs his hands through the dark stubble it’s left behind, he reflects that he has at least a little more of an answer now.

If anyone could create a world where there was no need for greed or hunger, nothing to kill or die for, than that person would be Brelyeis.

Something the old man once told Kaeh comes to mind as he shuffles aside the fallen ropes and shrugs back into Brelyeis’s colors – black and silver, strange colors that would make Kaeh a target in the forest or on the street but that he now wears with a quiet, disbelieving pride. 

_ Do you not have faith in anything? _

The answer then was no, and the answer now is still no. Kaeh does not have faith in anything. The world cares nothing for fair, and neither do most of its people, and folk still have to fight for their fair if they’re going to get it at all.

But.

Kaeh does have faith in  _ someone. _

Someone he hopes will never be alone again, and who never will be if Kaeh can do anything about it. 


End file.
